When I used to run Dell hardware I always had good luck with their hardware support. I just had to escalate to level 2 at least to get what I needed. My case was a broken motherboard after I stood up while I had a headphone jack wired into my stereo across the room. Replacement was no issue. I can't speak to their support these days and my days of buying hardware from them is behind me. If I were to build a workstation for nothing but Linux or Windows I'd probably do it on my own.

Apple support is just as good if not better. It helps if you know the right people at the right store. If they know you as being a long time and reliable customer, they've got room to help.

Unfortunately they've split support into Mac and iOS. If you've got a problem with an iOS device you're dealing with someone who doesn't know crap about anything, other than how to check your warranty after they hard reset your phone. The Mac guys are still top notch. I also learned the last time that I was in that if you need to do a clean install that they're happy to do it for you.

Yes, nerds, this goes against our core ethos of fixing it ourselves but the difference is that they image the machine over their local network. One hell of a lot faster than waiting on optical media. They also have current versions of old cats too, so if you're selling an old MacBook Pro that came with Leopard they can drop it right on there in about 20 minutes.

As far as our troll goes, all operating systems and pieces of hardware are just tools. Some are better suited than others. I run OS X, two versions of Windows and at least a couple versions of linux personally. I've got iOS devices that handle a lot of my day to day and recently I acquired an HTC One V (with Beats audio!!!) that I'll probably use as a burner/hack phone. More of a toy than anything, but I'm excited to dig into Android.

I just haven't had the chance to back up the custom build that came on the phone (not publicly available) and get (I suppose) jelly bean up and going.